Village puts up the shutters to foil drug spray burglars

A TRANQUIL Italian village has been terrorised by thieves who scale drainpipes and enter bedroom windows on hot nights, drugging people in their sleep before ransacking their homes.

Although summer break-ins have long been a problem in urban areas, rural areas have usually been spared, until now. Almost everyone in Sutri, north of Rome, has been or knows a victim "put to sleep" with a narcotic spray.

Santo Bomarsi, the village pork butcher and a hulk of a man, said he was like a frightened child after a "visit" last summer. Despite soaring temperatures, he goes to bed with the shutters closed tight. He said: "If they are opened, an alarm will go off."

The gang, thought to be made up of Slavs or Albanians, have drugged virtually everyone in some streets in the village. Last year the gang staged an average two or three robberies a night. On some occasions they drugged and robbed the occupants of whole blocks of flats.